Sunday, February 11, 2007

Colly flowers

While you're attempting to get your befuddled, still-a-bit-hungover heads round that quite preposterous turn of events, may I remind you that Chasms of the Earth is still trundling along, and would welcome your impassioned defence of the literary majesty of Dan Brown; and that the competition to win a signed copy of my new book is also live.

And here's a joke that my very splendid nephew George (age 5 and a bit) just told me.

Q: How do you get a baby astronaut to sleep?

A: Rocket!

Under normal circumstances that would be joke of the day, but I think the cricket result pips it.

The comment I heard on Radio 4's News Quiz tops even the cricket result for Joke Du Jour, in my humble opinion.

While discussion the female NASA astronaut who drove 1000 miles to attempt to murder a woman who was (apparently) vying for her astronaut-boyfriend's affection, the host of the News Quiz stated, quite calmly, "I don't know why she would go to such lenghts to preserve what was already a doomed relationship. Everyone knows that astronaut-boyfriends always break up on re-entry."

what am I like?

Author of books about Radiohead, Leonard Cohen and The Noughties, plus various odds and sods for The Guardian, Mojo, Time Out, Prospect, BBC, CNN and more. Finally doing an MA. You can reach me at timfootman (AT) gmail.com or follow me on Twitter or Instagram.

good taste is better than bad taste, but bad taste is better than no taste

So what’s all this Cultural Snow business, then?

“The writing itself is no big thing. I mean I like writing. It’s even relaxing for me. But the content is a real zero. Pointless in fact.”“What do you mean?”“I mean, for instance, you do the rounds of fifteen restaurants in one day, you eat one bite of each dish and leave the rest untouched. You think that makes sense?”“But you couldn’t very well eat everything, could you?”“Of course not. I’d drop dead in three days if I did. And everyone would think I was an idiot. I’d get no sympathy whatsoever.”“So what choice have you got?” she said.“I don't know. The way I see it, it’s like shoveling snow. You do it because somebody’s got to, not because it's fun.”“Shoveling snow, huh?” she mused.“Well, you know, cultural snow,” I said.—from Dance Dance Dance, by Haruki Murakami (translated by Alfred Birnbaum)